ing it was nonsense that brought me the night I came like a madman
roaring for drink. If there was a miracle that night, why shouldn't
there be a miracle to-night? And if a miracle ever happened in the
world, it happened that night, I'm thinking. Do you remember the dark
gray clouds tearing across the sky, and we walking side by side, I
trying to get away from you? I was that mad that I might have thrown you
into the bog-hole if the craving had not passed from me. And it was just
lifted from me as one might take the cap off one's head. You remember
the prayer we said, leaning over the bit of wall looking across the bog?
There was no lonesomeness that night coming home, Gogarty, though a
curlew might have felt a bit.'

'A curlew!'

'Well, there were curlews and plovers about, and a starving ass picking
grass between the road and the bog-hole. That night will be ever in my
mind. Where would I be now if it hadn't been that you kept on with me
and brought me back, cured? It wouldn't be a cassock that would be on my
back, but some old rag of a coat. There's nothing in this world,
Gogarty, more unlucky than a suspended priest. I think I can see myself
in the streets, hanging about some public-house, holding horses attached
to a cab-rank.'

'Lord of Heaven, Moran! what are you coming here to talk to me in this
way for? The night you're speaking of was bad enough, but your memory of
it is worse. Nothing of what you're saying would have happened; a man
like you would be always able to pick up a living.'

'And where would I be picking up a living if it weren't on a cab-rank,
or you either?'

'Well, 'tis melancholy enough you are this evening.'

'And all for nothing, for there you are, sitting in your old chair. I
see I've made a fool of myself.'

'That doesn't matter. You see, if one didn't do what one felt like
doing, one would have remorse of conscience for ever after.'

'I suppose so. It was very kind of you, Moran, to come all this way.'

'What is it but a step? Three miles--'

'And a half.'

Moved by a febrile impatience, which he could not control, Father Oliver
got up from his chair.

'Now, Moran, isn't it strange? I wonder how it was that you should have
come to tell me that you were going off to drink somewhere. You said you
were going to lie up in a public-house and drink for days, and yet you
didn't think of giving up the priesthood.'

'What are you saying, Gogarty? Don't you know well enough I'd have b